Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

941 SOMEBODY TO SHOVE

SOMEBODY TO SHOVE

Sunday afternoon we got good news from the motel where Remo was staying: they'd have vacancy starting in the morning.

Around the time Landon, Ziggy, and me were doing our best to eat the rest of the donuts (while they were still fresh, of course), Janine started making noise about Landon needing to sleep in the living room.

"Why?" I asked. "He won't bother us if he's up in the top bunk. It's not like we're going to keep him awa–"

The horrified look she was giving me almost made me backpedal. I did, a little, I guess, by acknowledging her discomfort: "All we'll do is sleep, you know."

Apparently she hadn't realized that Ziggy and I were not sleeping in separate beds. She looked back and forth between us. "You'd get in the same bed?"

Ziggy had some chocolate on his face from a chocolate-glazed donut and I resisted the urge to grab him and lick it off right there in front of her.

"Well, and why shouldn't they," Claire piped up suddenly from the kitchen doorway. "They're small. And they're–" She tapped her ring finger instead of saying something out loud.

"You have got to be kidding me," Janine said. "I'm trying to raise my kid... right. On the straight and narrow, as it were."

As it were. I shook my head. "It's not contagious, you know." Landon's eyes were very wide and it was obvious he was listening hard to everything we were saying.

"I don't mean the... way you are, I mean the... way you act." She threw up her hands. Such a Catch-22, right? Can't protect your kid from insidious, queer ideas if they're listening to you talk about them, can you? "Okay, Landon, time for a nap."

To everyone's surprise, a sugared-up five-year-old agreed immediately. "Top bunk!" he cried, as he got down from the table and ran to the bedroom. I think he had concluded that the argument was over and that the naptime decree meant that him staying with us in the bedroom was won.

Janine came back a few minutes later. By then we had moved to the living room, where Remo was watching some football game on the television, but he had the sound all the way down and didn't seem to be paying much attention to it.

"Look," she said, standing to one side of the tube. "I've got no problem with you being gay per se. But do you have to be such weirdos about it?"

Before I could formulate any kind of an answer, Claire jumped in. "Jan, there is nothing weird about two people who love each other sharing a bed."

"Oh, come on, mother. They're, you know, they're–" Janine sputtered a little. "These aren't just any two people who just happen to be men."

"You're right, one of them's my son, your brother." Claire was standing behind the couch, across from me. She seemed to puff up in size like a badger or something getting ready to attack.

"But come on, the weird haircuts and everything. They're trying to provoke a reaction," Janine said.

I had a little flashback to something Colin had told me about how people reacted to his mohawk and neck tattoos, but I didn't have much brainpower to devote to that thought because most of my head was just thinking, My son? She just said "my son." She means me. What is going on here?

"And so you've decided you just have to react?" Claire's tone of voice made me cringe, but I was used to being on the receiving end of her barbs and chain-yanking, not being defended by it. "You've appointed yourself the society police?"

"Yes, I damn well have," Janine said. "After all, you taught us that's a mother's job, make absolutely sure your children have the right clothes on, the right haircuts, or god forbid they should leave the house with a hair out of place or carrying an extra pound."